Layers

At this weekend’s Homebrew Website Club, the topic of Taylor Swift came up (I wonder who brought that up!). One person shared the layers in the song exile; how they became more perceptible with different pieces of audio equipment. The song has layers.

Today I have been listening to Bon Iver’s Artist in Residence interview with BBC Radio 6. In it, he shows the layers upon which several songs he has written were built. I am listening to the section on the song If Only I Can Wait right now. It started with one pattern of sounds, then another, and a vocal “if only I can wait”; there are layers.

Sometimes when I am listening to a song I challenge myself to focus on a different layer – maybe the drums, or a guitar. The Bon Iver interview has me thinking about patterns. Songs are full of them – the chords and progressions and choruses. The patterns blend together. They are composed.

I asked What is the web equivalent of “layers”, like in music? I am fascinated by how metaphors from the real world – from gardens to communities to music – apply to what we create, in disciplines from writing to the web to interface design.

Layers are a fundamental concept in design, both of web pages and in general. There is a background and a foreground. Parts of an interface may recede further into the background at any time, while other parts progress into the foreground. For example, when you open a window on your computer, you have a new layer in front of other layers. You can resize and change and arrange and rearrange them.

There are layers in the design of the web, too. The operating system exists at one layer. Browsers exist on another. Web pages exist in another, which themselves are made based on designs, philosophies, ideas, audience, and so many more. All of these layers interact with each other in different ways. The web browser presents a web page. But the upload file feature may ask the operating system to show a window.

Someone pointed out how layers come up in writing, in many ways. I enjoy using metaphors – telling one story in such a way that it may have greater depth. I especially embrace this in poetic writing. A story can be about more than one thing – there are so many opportunities to craft the direction of a story. What details matter? How will they be woven together? How do they change with more analysis, or more context?

I am curious: what does the question What is the web equivalent of “layers”? mean to you? I’d love to hear from you.